Rachel Comey Tells How She Struck on Denim’s Cultiest New Cut

If you don’t know the Rachel Comey Legion jeans by name, you’d know them by sight. With their high, whittled waist, flaring out at the hip and coming to a softly fraying conclusion just above the ankle, they’re among the most tenor-setting denim styles in recent memory. Look-alike versions—at varying levels of, shall we say, literalness—have sprung up from designer denim brands and mass-market labels alike. And while Comey has landed on something evidently novel with her let-out hemlines and lush indigo wash, the Legion’s origins go way back. “[When] I grew up in the seventies, it was kind of a common thing in my neighborhood,” Comey tells Vogue.com. “Your mom would buy you school jeans and hem them six inches because you were too small, and then you would grow, and then eventually you would let the hem out.”

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Photo: Courtesy of Rachel Comey

While the designer says the idea may have taken some convincing where her studio team was concerned, it was to her a logical next step in the brand’s growth. “I think that there was a hem moment happening, but for us, we were just working on our denim and exploring where we wanted to go with it.” That instinct paid off: The resulting pair has proved a way to do denim that resonates with Comey’s arty clientele, rather than trying to compete with a saturated market’s stretch-loving mega-players. Still, it was the cues taken by industry titans that first made her realize the hit she had on her hands—“when people started sending me links to other versions!” she laughs. “Or when someone comes into my store wearing the H&M version and looking for ours, and we’re sold out because we make everything to order, and we sold out pretty quickly. Our production takes 90 days, so we had to make a wait list, while the mass brands could turn them around in two weeks, probably.”

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Photo: Taylor Jewell

Still, the imitations would seem to have done little to dent market demand for the original, which has been flying off shelves consistently since its resort 2015 debut. As Comey tells it: “They’re still selling for us, so I feel like even if you got them from somebody else [or saw] the idea somewhere, people are coming to us for them.” The authentic Legion remains a favorite of much-lensed industry mainstays like Leandra Medine and Elina Halimi. And to naysayers who would doubt the ability of a Tommy Ton shot to translate into wholesale orders, think again: Comey says that the jean’s street style fame has translated into growing distribution, particularly in Europe, where the pairs’ scarcity have lent them an air of hyper-covetability.

In response, Comey has debuted a handful of other washes and, hitting stores soon, the Slim Legion, a slightly tapered take for, as the designer says, “those days when you don’t feel like wearing so much personality.” Statement-making or not, there’s no denying the universal appeal of the classic. Case in point: Just a couple of weeks ago, Brooklyn fashion favorite French Garment Cleaners posted a snap of two men wearing the style to its Instagram feed.